The Children of Adam and Eve

He was also 10th chief justice of the U.S. (1921-30); he was the only
person in U.S. history to head two Branches of the federal government.

The son of a leading Ohio, USA lawyer and politician, he studied at Yale
University, graduating second in his class in 1878, and at the Cincinnati
Law School, receiving his degree and commencing practice in 1880. Taft
moved rapidly up through appointive offices, as assistant district
attorney and internal revenue collector in Cincinnati in the early 1880s,
later as a state judge, then as solicitor general of the U.S. (1890-92)
and judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals (1892-1900). He was an able
lawyer and a jurist of moderately progressive social views, and he formed
political connections and lasting friendships, the most important of which
were with the future presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
His wife became his astute adviser and prodded him to pursue lofty
ambitions. Their three Children all distinguished themselves.

Rise to Prominence

In 1900 President McKinley appointed Taft head of the commission to govern
the Philippines, and the following year he became the islands' first
civilian governor, a post he filled admirably, setting up judicial and
local government systems, starting social services, and dealing with
native leaders and Roman Catholic Church officials over land disposition.
His Work drew favorable attention from the U.S. press and made him a
popular national figure. In 1904 President Roosevelt named him secretary
of war, a position from which he continued to supervise the Philippines,
directed construction of the Panama Canal and started government in the
Canal Zone, and contributed to the modernization of the army. Taft also
helped to conduct the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War in
1905, and he traveled to the Far East to settle a conflict with Japan over
the exclusion of Oriental immigration. Twice he declined Roosevelt's
offers of a seat on the Supreme Court, which he wanted, because his wife
persuaded him to remain aVailable for the presidency. Receiving
Roosevelt's nod for the 1908 Republican nomination, he capitalized on the
incumBent's Winning popularity and the party's strength, easily defeating
the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan.

Taft as President

Taft was not a successful president, both because he faced a difficult
situation and because he lacked political gifts. A deepening division
within the Republican party between progressives and conservatives, which
Roosevelt had smoothed over and evaded, dogged his administration from the
outset. Taft's attempt in 1909 to revise the protective tariff, which had
grown increasingly unpopular, became a fiasco when conservative Republican
senators subverted the legislation. Taft, However, failed either to Work
out compromises or to fight for his program, and he alienated his former
progressive supPorters. Relations with progressives deteriorated further
in 1910, when, after a complicated administrative struggle, Taft fired the
chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, the nation's leading
conservationist and a friend of Roosevelt. Republican unity collapsed in
the 1910 primaries when Taft unsuccessfully opposed several progressives
supported by Roosevelt, and they and the Democrats scored big victories in
the fall elections. Those conflicts doomed the Taft administration
politically, although it did compile a number of accomplishments,
including establishment of the Federal Children's Bureau, vigorous
antitrust pRosecutions of big business, and a restrained, pacific foreign
policy. Taft suffered a severe personal and political blow early in his
term when his wife was partially incapacitated by a stroke (1909).

Taft's presidency might have ended quietly if Roosevelt had not run
against him in 1912. Siding with progressive dissidents, Roosevelt won
most of the primaries but lost the Republican nomination because Taft
controlled the party machinery. Charging a steal, Roosevelt then bolted to
head the third-party Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket. By this time, Taft
regarded Roosevelt as a dangerous demagogue, especially because of his
criticism of court decisions, and he stayed in the presidential race
without hope of Winning, only to keep Roosevelt from being elected.
Although he finished behind Roosevelt, carrying only Utah and Vermont,
Taft split the usual Republican vote and threw the election to the
Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson. He was pleased at the outcome and left
the White House with undisguised relief.

Later Career

Taft's years as ex-president were among his happiest and most productive.
In 1913 he became a professor at Yale Law School and finally succeeded in
reducing his renowned weight below 300 lb. He remained active in the
Republican party, and although he criticized Wilson's domestic policies
from an increasingly conservative stance, he supported his successor's
foreign policies and in 1915 headed the League to Enforce Peace, which
advocated a league of nations before Wilson did. After the United States
entered World War I in 1917, Wilson appointed Taft cochairman of the
National War Labor Board, and when the Republicans regained the White
House in 1921, President Warren G. Harding named him chief justice of the
U.S., fulfilling Taft's Long-held dream. Taft became one of the great
chief justices in the history of the Supreme Court. He again sHowed his
administrative ability by reducing the Court's backlog and securing
Passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the justices More control
over the selection of Cases to be heard. Taft also impressed his judicial
views on the Supreme Court, forsaking his own earlier progressivism for a
More conservative stress on property rights and governmental limitation. A
majority of the justices retained his viewpoint until the late 1930s. In
February 1930, Taft resigned the chief justiceship in failing health, and
he died on March 8, 1930.